In the first of several reports from RAW STORY on an expansion of the widening fundraising morass currently plaguing Republican House Majority Leader, Tom DeLay, the White House itself is now being named as a major beneficiary of Jack Abramoff's lobbying firm in dollar numbers that dwarf anything DeLay has so far been tied to!!!

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In a major afternoon exclusive, RAW STORY will report that Greenberg Traurig, Abramoff's lobbying firm, has made what amounts to a "massive in-kind donation" to Bush-Cheney to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars!!!

...MORE...

Bush-Cheney 2000 Recount Committee has $314,000 "unpaid" to Greenberg Traurig from total bill of $800,000!

Four-plus years after recount, outstanding portion of Bush-Cheney's bill to Abramoff's lobbying firm still unpaid.

Newsweek reported in 2001, when the unpaid number was still at $800,000:

We suppose those "in-kind contributions" to the "reputations" of Greenberg Traurig employees may have served as a fine trade for the in-kind contribution that Greenberg Traurig appears to have made to Bush-Cheney by not collecting on their billed fees...

RAW STORY is now reporting that many of those employees, including the son of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who was hired by Greenberg Traurig during the recount period after being retained by Bush-Cheney, have enjoyed great boosts to their resume from the work done on the 2000 Recount...

Full story now available at RAW STORY!!!

Clarification from RAW STORY on their original edition of the article...

What began innocently enough with a watershed article several weeks ago by Tribune Media Service's Robert Koehler on the need for Election Reform and an investigation into the results of Election 2004, has now erupted into a full-fledged firestorm resulting Wednesday afternoon in the unprecedented rejection of Koehler's latest column by the higher-ups at TMS where Koehler is both a columnist and editor!

Tribune Media Services is the syndication arm of the Tribune Company which, in turn, is the parent company to the Chicago Tribune.

Koehler's original ground-breaking column from April --- the first by an American Mainstream Media journalist that we know of to out-and-out charge that the 2004 Election was stolen --- was written a few days after Koehler attended the National Election Reform Conference last month in Nashville. The piece was headlined "The Silent Scream of Numbers: The 2004 election was stolen — will someone please tell the media?"

He followed it up the next week with another stunner headlined "Democracy's Abu Ghraib — If they can disable an election, what's coming next?"

While both pieces were distributed via TMS to syndicate member newspapers, only a handful chose to run either of those two columns.

Most notably, however, despite Chicago Tribune itself having chosen to run neither column, their "Public Editor", Don Wycliffe, found it appropriate to write a column in the Trib's pages wherein he rebutted Koehler's original piece. Wycliff's rebuttal, as reported here previously, attempted to discredit Koehler's column, Koehler himself, and those of us who might give a damn about democracy and the responsibility that the people (and yes, that would include the media) have to remain vigilant in order to sustain it.

Wycliff's column, citing the "moral example" of Richard Nixon (yes, not kidding) as the figure whom Americans ought to follow in regards to potentially stolen elections, has erupted in a torrent of email directed towards the misguided and/or misinformed Wycliff and in support of Koehler.

Koehler once again hits a home-run with this week's column in response to Wycliff's. Or at least he would have had the Masters of Tribune Media Services not killed the article for the first time in Koehler's career!...

Did this performance really appear on NBC's The Tonight Show??? Does anybody know???

(UPDATE: The link to the video above has been changed to include a higher quality version now available via Justice Through Music. And yes, it's since been confirmed as legit! It really aired as is!)

We usually like to check these things out for ourselves, but are otherwise occupied for the moment and yet would love any details anyone may have.

We'd be so incredibly delighted to know that it actually aired on American Broadcast Television that we'd even be more than willing to overlook the use of the misleading phrase "Voter Fraud" in lieu of "Election Fraud"!

(Hat tip to Emailer MitchMB!)

Catching up in a brief "off the road" moment with another item from the good Mr. Conyers' blog posted yesterday.

Some months ago he promised not to let go of the Election Reform issue. As far as we can tell, he has kept that promise --- without fail --- each and every moment since then.

From his latest public volley yesterday:

On the money, as usual, Congressman.

But allow us also to include this mouth-watering notion also from his same blog item:

While we do not know if Conyers was referring to anything in particular beyond the current tanking approval ratings for Bush and Cronies, we have some early word ourselves about a coming wave (perhaps a tsunami even) which may be coming ashore soon. Even within the next 24 hours or so...

We'd recommend you keep an eye on The BRAD BLOG over that period for a few details as we're able to release them...

And on we go into Year Three! Let's just hope it's as "catastrophically successful" as the first two!

A dose of reality for those who've been told that a Runaway Bride was the most newsworthy item this week.

(Seriously, I hate this shit.)

Oddly enough, the Progressive Movement salutes Tom DeLay as well! Go figure!

And then there's this from the WaPo piece today which suggests this "salute" is actually a "wave goodbye" (do ya think?):

Oddly enough, the Progressive Movement thinks Tom DeLay is the key to Bush's agenda as well! Uh, oh...Hope "the president" doesn't lose his keys!

And as a final, "oddly enough", looks like that Paul Weyrich fella is a busy busy boy of late working overtime on damage control in support of friend, DeLay. He was quoted defending the soon-to-be outgoing House Majority Leader in WaPo's lollapalooza from yesterday covering the latest bit of foul play in which DeLay's great $upporter Jack Abramoff is found embroiled again, right next to Mr. DeLay! This time, even including a gangland style murder! And in South Florida, of all places! Oddly enough. Go figure!:

Ah, SunCruz, Florida, Tom DeLay, Murder.

Salute!

UPDATE 5/28/05: "Conservative Salute" to Tom DeLay falls flat... An insider reports...

(NOTE FROM BRAD: Catching up on a few items as time allows. Still mostly "off the grid" for the next several days, but jumping in when I can.)

You may recall the recent decertification of E-Voting machines made by the UniLect corporation in several Pennsylvania counties. That occured as a result of one good American citizen, Sheila Green, demanding an investigation into the Direct Electronic Response (DRE) voting machines in the state (oh, okay...Commonwealth) of Pennsylvania. The effort cost her just $450 and resulted in the decertification of PA's $1.2 million UniLect touch-screen voting machines.

The machines were decertified after the investigation, according to the Sec. of the Commonwealth's statement, because...

UniLect was generously allowed a chance to meet with the Department again to answer to the concerns revealed by the investigation. And now, after meeting with them, it looks like UniLect failed to meet the concerns according to a Press Release issued yesterday:

(Hat tip the good folks from VotersUnite.org for the info!)

Last week, an article of ours pointed to Bob Koehler's watershed column headlined "The silent scream of numbers: The 2004 election was stolen — will someone please tell the media?" as the first time such words had been uttered by someone considered to be a part of the Mainstream Media.

Koehler appeared on our radio show that weekend to discuss it (Archive of that interview in MP3).

Koehler is editor and columnist for Tribune Media Services where he published his article for any of the Tribune Media's clients to pick up and run in their papers. Few, apparently, did.

Chicago Tribune itself did not run his article, but has apparently found it fitting today to run a column which attempts to debunk his column! Without even the courtesy of running it first! (Bob's words were "debunk", we would suggest "attack" is the more appropriate description!)

Take a look at the column today by Tribune Public Editor, Don Wycliff. Be astounded or appalled. Your choice. Either way, you may wish to help educate Mr. Wycliff politely so he doesn't make quite as much of an ass out of himself in future columns.

We're still on the roll ourselves, as we will continue to be for several days at least, so virtually no time for a detailed rebuttal here. I'll leave that to you BRAD BLOGGERS instead. Though, in truth, with Wycliff pointing towards Richard Nixon (yes, Richard Nixon!) for moral guidance on the matter of how to appropriately deal with Elections in America, does one really need to say much about the crediblity of this Wycliff fellow?

...CONTACTS...
Chicago Tribune Public Editor, Don Wycliff
Tribune Media Services Editor (and American Hero), Robert Koehler

Must hit the road shortly, so just a quick link to the work of blogger Nick Lewis who has been doing some interesting investigation into some odd CNN-related occurrences on a number of well-known blogs, including The BRAD BLOG. We've been quietly keeping our eye on this story for a number of days as Lewis' work pans out and as he looks into what might be a bit of strange Guerrilla Marketing being done by CNN on blogs such as this one.

Lewis posts a follow-up to his original piece today.

More on this strange story as time allows in the coming days, but we're glad to see more and more "Investigative Bloggers" showing up to do the job of the guys who actually get paid for it! Thank you, Nick!

Several long-planned obligations and super-secret missions dictate that we will be in and out over the next week or more. It's unclear how much we will be able to post here during that period. Hopefully plenty, but we don't know for sure. Our stalwart crew of guest bloggers (led as usual by the intrepid Winter Patriot) will be on call to fill any notable gaps in my availability during the coming days with Open Threads and/or enlightening news items of note. Thanks both for your understanding and your continuing tireless support!

(P.S. The full Archives from last week's BRAD SHOW are now online for your listening and podcasting pleasure!)

The mighty Bob Fitrakis of the Columbus Free Press --- responsible for boatloads of tremendous investigative reporting on the ground from Ohio in Election 2004 and one of the participants in the Moss v. Bush lawsuit seeking to set aside the election results in the Buckeye State --- has been mostly quiet of late while working on an upcoming book on all of the above to be published soon.

Today, however, it looks like he's unleashed quite a bit of what he hasn't been able to report on over the last several weeks while hard at work writing the historical record. His new article on the "rise of the right wing juggernaut in Ohio" sheds fresh light on several key points on the insidious Election Night machinations, and even those to this day, of Ohio's Election Viceroy, Sec. of State J. Kenneth Blackwell (also the Co-Chair of Ohio's Committee to Re-Elect Bush/Cheney '04).

Amongst the several noteworthy new items Fitrakis catches up on today is some inside skinny on the now-infamous Warren County lockdown on Election Night when an apparently phony "Homeland Security Alert" led Board of Elections officials to issue an unprecedented scheme that shut out all press and witnesses from late-night vote counting in the county's election center.

Free Press has received an insider's account of what happened that night. Here's a sample:

As well, in a section of the article sub-headed as "Whitewash with a black face", Fitrakis connects a few more interesting dots on the phony GOP front-group busy conning America and hoping to derail true Electoral Reform. Fitrakis ties together the "non-partisan" hoaxsters of the "American Center for Voting Rights" (ACVR) --- the group we originally exposed several weeks ago exclusively here --- with some of the other folks who testified recently at Rep. Bob Ney's hastily convened U.S. House Administrative Hearings on Electoral problems in OH...

Disturbingly apropos of our previous piece on the wankers of the Mainstream Media and their disservice to America...Our friends at FreePress.net have unleashed the following video on the Big Media Boyz who call the shots. For your online viewing displeasure...

(By the way, the Free Press is organizing the big National Media Reform Conference in St. Louis a couple of weeks from now. Somehow, they seem to have managed to get some great big names, but not a single blogger! Hello? We like 'em, so be nice, but think that they should have at least one at the conference! Don't you? Being the media whore that I must obviously be, I'd be delighted to speak at the conference if they'll have me. But you may have to apply some POLITE pressure asking them to do so! You can email them at conference@freepress.net. Feel free to request any blogger if you prefer that they hear from someone else. Either way, the voice of the new media should be better represented at anything calling itself a "National Media Reform Conference" in 2005! Dontcha think?)

Juan Cole gets it right in his highly recommend piece today pointing out exactly why and how the MSM's required 15% profit margin has killed the entire industry and is bringing the rest of the country down with it. It's America (and the rest of the world!) which suffers from the corporate media delinquency, of course, as profit has replaced the public service that once was "the news".

Back in the day, news was always a loss-leader. It wasn't meant to make money, but to perform a public service. Back in the day, while CBS lost money with their extraordinary news gathering operation, Bill Paley was proud of that jewel in the "tiffany network's" crown. In America 2005, however, losing money for the good of the nation will not be tolerated. And those of us who understand that it's about issues and public safety and governmental responsible will be branded as America Haters in the process.

As Cole smartly puts it, "We don't care."

Read the whole piece if you can. It closes with this money quote...

Indeed.

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win"
- Mahatma Gandhi

If this Sunday article from Washington Post is any indication, it seems we're now somewhere between that "laugh at you" phase and that "fight you" phase. Which I choose to see as continuing good news...since we're heading straight towards that "then you win" phase in the bargain.

The piece headlined "Vote Fraud Theorists Battle Over Plausibility" from WaPo's Terry M. Neal is, at least, a step in the right direction. The issues are finally being discussed on no matter which page in the mainstreamest of the Mainstream Media.

With that, however, comes the usual expected imbalance in the bargain. The WaPo article discusses the recent scientific report from U.S. Count Votes which debunks the notion that the Exit Polls were wrong (as Bush Supporters, Republicans, and even the Exit Polling company would like you to believe) by explaining that the odds are several millions to one that the Exit Polls could say one thing in virtually all of the swing states, only to wildly change --- and in only one direction, Bush's --- at the last minute to give Bush a "victory" in the final Voting Results.

In covering the report --- as we've come to expect whenever such issues are discussed at all in the mainstream --- Neal is skeptical and as well, quotes two other skeptics. They only bother to quote one supporter of the study, one of the authors themselves.

One of the great misconceptions (generously) or misdirections (more probably) that the piece offers is Neal's notion that...

...Well, no. That's not actually the case at all. It would take a relatively small number of people to secretly flip the vote only in the states where it was needed, and even in only the counties were such manipulation of the vote would be less likely to be noticed (say, in Democratic Counties...where there was indeed much unexplained funny business, to say the least, last November).

Let's focus, however, on the good news, as we're wont to do. Neal starts the column thusly...